


put your lips close to mine, as long as they dont touch

by breadrave



Category: Dimension 20 (Web Series)
Genre: Character Study, F/F, Post-Betrayal, Repression
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-27
Updated: 2020-08-27
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:26:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26142568
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/breadrave/pseuds/breadrave
Summary: How selfish it is, to doom someone to imprisonment and death and yet to seek them out around every corner. Penelope can neither be free from Sam nor take back what she had done. There will never be another movie night, there will never be another whispered conversation as they sat on the bleachers and watched the bloodrush practice. There will be no more fights about Johnny Spells. No more twinges of jealousy as Penelope looks at them together, Sam fawning over some guy who didn’t care about her, not really, the weight of her silent anger mixing with the weight of Dayne’s arm around her shoulder until her skin was flushed and crawling with alcohol and frustration, doomed to misunderstand her own desire. There will be no more friendship. And maybe if they could have never been more, that’s for the best.
Relationships: Penelope Everpetal/Sam Nightingale
Comments: 2
Kudos: 13





	put your lips close to mine, as long as they dont touch

**Author's Note:**

> title is from treacherous by taylor swift!
> 
> this was heavily inspired by some nightpetal meta by ezra (@kittyrachel on twt!)

How selfish it is, to doom someone to imprisonment and death and yet to seek them out around every corner. Penelope can neither be free from Sam nor take back what she had done. There will never be another movie night, there will never be another whispered conversation as they sat on the bleachers and watched the bloodrush practice. There will be no more fights about Johnny Spells. No more twinges of jealousy as Penelope looks at them together, Sam fawning over some guy who didn’t care about her, not really, the weight of her silent anger mixing with the weight of Dayne’s arm around her shoulder until her skin was flushed and crawling with alcohol and frustration, doomed to misunderstand her own desire. There will be no more friendship. And maybe if they could have never been more, that’s for the best.

Penelope Everpetal has a box under her bed where she keeps her photos. There is a planner tucked away in a drawer with a five year plan, “stay friends with Sam forever” just below “become prom queen”. There is a crystal sitting on her desk that she has to give to Johnny Spells tomorrow, his girlfriend inside. Penelope can’t even look towards it. She paces around her room, the adrenaline still racing through her veins from the fight minutes ago. Penelope knows that she had to trap Sam. They needed another maiden soon to stay on schedule and Sam was a candidate, so when Sam asked to come over tonight she knew what she needed to do. It was stupid to be worried anyway, if Penelope could just make herself forget about Sam then it wouldn’t matter, and she would be Prom Queen, the first in a century. Nothing was more important than that, not even the sweet smell of the lotion that Sam used after her showers or the moments when their hands would brush when sharing a shake at Krom’s Diner. 

And Penelope had trapped her. Just like that. Sam’s back was turned, both of them on her bed, scrolling on their crystals, when Penelope had gotten up, looking over her shoulder at the slender form on her bed, frowning at Sam, and grabbing the palimpsest from her backpack. There was one moment where she could have stopped. The palimpsest was in her hands but she hadn’t recited the spell yet. She could have confessed everything to Sam, tried to get her in on their plan, but the throne was only big enough for one. Deep in her heart, she knew that Sam would have chosen her over the crown, and that knowledge only stoked the fire in her stomach. She was not that noble.

She gripped the palimpsest so tightly that the rough surface dug into her palm, and as she turned around, Sam had looked up at her, the smile on her light blue face fading as Penelope started reciting the spell, tears blurring her vision. Before Sam had enough time to feel betrayed, there was a flash of arcane light that forced Penelope to close her eyes. When she opened them again, Sam was gone. And she was crying. 

Now she isn’t crying, but trembling all the same, with the crystal on her desk and the photos under her bed. She looks around at the walls of her bedroom. They are speckled with a photo collage, and so many of them are of Sam. So many of them are of her and Sam together. 

Penelope’s breathing accelerates as all of the Sams look at her from their mount on the walls. She walks slowly to the collage over her mirror, which she always privately thought of as the photos where she and Sam looked the best. A dozen or so printed photos bluetacked onto the wall, taken with various crystals, all of Penelope and Sam decked out in party attire, laughing together and holding each other to varying degrees. They always liked to take at least one candid photo like this whenever they went out, and Penelope mounted them over her full length mirror where she could always see them. She felt sick looking at the rainbow glitter on Sam’s cheekbones and the points where they were touching in the photo, knowing that there would never be another moment like that. 

She turns away, tears welling again, and grabs her crystal, texting Johnny Spells and Aelwyn Abernant that she has a new maiden but can’t keep the palimpsest. She blinks, seeing Sam’s confusion behind her eyelids, the trust that Sam put in her so strong that her face never even registered betrayal. 

Penelope manages to get ready for bed, the normality of her routine keeping the guilt at bay for the minutes that it takes to wash her face and turn off her lights. But in the dark there is nothing but her thoughts, and she has trouble sleeping, but even as she can feel the regret taking root, she tries to pull it out, Sam is a necessary casualty for her to become who she was always meant to be: the perfect person. 

If she wasn’t the perfect girl, the perfect teenager, and eventually the perfect woman, then there was no worth to her life. Being Prom Queen meant showing everyone at Augefort how flawless she was, in her dress with a crown atop her head. Penelope’s heart beat faster at the mental image. That was why it was for the best that Sam was gone. 

People who fall in love with their best friends are not perfect.

People who feel nauseous when their best friend video called them, people who ache to reach out and touch her shoulder, people who leave their boyfriends at parties to go sit together outside around the side of the house, leaning on each other and laughing with their faces too close, those people are wrong, and Penelope cannot handle a world where she isn’t on top.

She sleeps fitfully.

Penelope wakes up the next morning (after Sam, day one), and gets ready without thinking. She pushes her emotions away, refusing to feel any of the guilt that is clawing at the edges of her psyche. She grabs the palimpsest and roughly throws it into her backpack. It’s just a thing. The sight of the photos over her mirror stops her. Penelope has no way to express the profoundness of the self-loathing that overtakes her. She knows that she can’t look at Sam ever again, and so, before she gives away the crystal that holds her best friend’s soul in it away forever to be imprisoned and kept away from Elmville, she rips the photos down meticulously, leaving behind a graveyard of bluetack. She walks around the entire room, ridding her walls of any evidence that Sam had ever existed as a part of her life. She pulls out the dusty box under her bed of old photos and deposits the photos of Sam there, the thick stack of photos fanning out on impact and giving Penelope one last glimpse of the love that she once had. She shuts the box and slides it out of sight. 

It is a long drive to Aguefort. 

Penelope’s bag feels unusually heavy as she steps out of her car, three parking spaces over from where Johnny Spells sits astride his motorcycle, lighting up a cigarette. She forces her legs to move, one step at a time, as she crosses the space between them and pulls out the palimpsest. Sam. She thrusts it out to Johnny, like it was burning her, and he takes it without looking at her.

“It’s Sam,” Penelope says without thinking, wildly hoping that someone would share in her grief.

Johnny doesn’t even glance at her. “Figured. I knew she was going to have to go eventually.” He tosses the palimpsest up and down for a moment. Careless.

Penelope doesn’t say another word to him. She walks into the halls of Augefort Adventuring Academy, ready to play the part of an upset and concerned best friend. 

It barely feels like an act. 

There is no moment in Penelope’s life after Sam. She thought that there could be, that maybe the ghost of Sam would leave her, but there is no moment that is free from the look on Sam’s face as Penelope imprisoned her within the crystal. There is no moment after Aelwyn Abernant clocked Sam as a potential maiden, dooming Penelope to her internal hurricane. There is no moment after Penelope rips the photo of her and Sam from where it was taped to the inside of her locker and shoves it deep beneath her textbooks. There are only moments before she met Sam and before she betrayed her. There is no after.

**Author's Note:**

> hope you enjoyed it!! please leave a kudos and a comment if you liked it :-)


End file.
